3 YouTube tactics to boost your SEO

It’s no secret that YouTube is a traffic source with almost limitless potential.
There’s only one problem:
It’s a very crowded place. In fact, according to YouTube, there are more than 100 hours of video uploaded to the site every minute.
Considering the deluge of content you have to compete with on YouTube, the obvious question is: “How do you get people to watch YOUR video instead of the millions of others?”
The answer? Video SEO.
I bet that most of your competition lazily uploads their videos and hopes that one of them “goes viral.” Needless to say, this rarely (if ever) works out.
But if you take the time to optimize your videos for SEO, you’ll get significantly more traffic than your competitors.
Let’s jump right in.

A Brief YouTube SEO Primer

Before we dive into how you can use to optimize your videos for YouTube, let’s go over some of the most important ranking factors that YouTube uses.
It’s not nearly as complex as Google’s famous 200 ranking signals, but YouTube’s algorithm is no joke.


I know that’s a lot of information to process, so let me give you the Cliff’s Notes of the most important signals that YouTube uses:

• Title tag information
• Audience retention
• Keywords in description tag
• Tags
• Video length
• Number of subscribers after watching
• Comments
• Likes and dislikes

With that, it’s time to show you five ways that you can leverage these signals to get more traffic to your videos…and ultimately to your site.

1. Write Super-Long Video Descriptions

Remember that YouTube and Google can’t watch or listen to your video (yet).
That means that they heavily lean on the text surrounding the video to understand your video’s topic.


Why is this such a crime?
Well, the more YouTube knows about your video, the more confidently it can rank it for your target keyword.
But more importantly, YouTube uses keywords in the description to rank you for super-long tail keywords.
For example, I published a video on YouTube a few months back called “SEO Strategy 2014: How to Rank in Google Today.” My description for that video is a hefty 291 words. Almost an entire blog post, really.


Bottom line: Make sure your video descriptions are at least 200 words

2. Optimize Around “Video Keywords”

Ranking in YouTube is great, but ranking your video in YouTube and Google is even better.
Although Google gives YouTube videos an inherent edge in the SERPs, that’s only true for certain keywords.
These keywords are called “Video Keywords” because they tend to have video results on Google’s first page.


This makes total sense if you think about it.
Someone searching for “cute cats” doesn’t want to read an article like, “10 reasons cats are so darn cute.” They want to see cute cats playing, eating, and sleeping!
On the other hand, someone searching for “ankle sprain” wants to read about symptoms and treatments.


Bottom line: Before deciding on a keyword for your video, check to see if there are video results on the first page. If so, that’s a keyword you should strongly consider because you can potentially get your video ranked in Google and YouTube.

3. Get More Video Views From Online Communities

Online communities like Quora and LinkedIn groups are fantastic places to funnel traffic from.
The thing is, most communities don’t take too kindly to someone dropping links to their content all over the place.
But they’re usually open to people sharing helpful YouTube videos, like yours!
Because the number and quality of your video views is one of the most important YouTube ranking factors, getting views from targeted communities works wonders.
Just find a question in the community that your video could help answer.


Bottom line: Share your video liberally on online communities. This will hook your video up with the type of quality, high-retention views that YouTube likes to see.






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